Dear Ms Wileman

Information Request FR1499

Thank you for your information request dated 01.10.2009. Your request has been dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Your request

Under the freedom of information act I would like to know numerical

statistics in order by year during the period of 1998 to 2008 (or

as far back as you can go without charging me) for the following;

1) how many children were taken into local authority care on

interim care orders and emergency protection orders under the

catagory of emotional harm during the above period ? i do not wish

you to include any children for any other catagories of harm/abuse.

2)Out of these children who were taken into care for emotional harm

how many of them were specifically for domestic violence between

their parents? again i do not wish you to include children who had

violence directed at them as that would fall into a different

catagory being physical abuse.

3)Out of these children who were put into care for domestic

violence how many were returned to family or extended family ?

4)Out of these how many children were put on full care orders?

5)of the children put on full care orders how many were adopted

during these periods.

Our response

Unfortunately, it has been estimated that the time it will take to undertake the necessary search, retrieval and preparation work that will enable us to respond to the request you have made will exceed the fee limit as set out in the Appropriate Limit and Fees Regulations. Therefore, the Council is not obliged to provide a response and I will not be processing your request further. For information purposes, the fee limit set down by the Regulations is £450.00 and in our case this equates to a maximum of 18 hours' of search and retrieval time.

We understand that during the period of 1998 - 2008 there were in total 939 interim care orders and emergency protection orders made in favour of Northamptonshire County Council. However, we also understand that these orders can be obtained under a variety of categories of which a number could include “emotional harm”. The Council's data bases do not list these categories and accordingly to provide you with the exact information you have requested at point 1). It would be necessary to manually check the 939 files in order to determine which matters come within the remit of your request. It would then be necessary to extract the remaining information you have requested from the files identified to collate the information.

As you will appreciate emotional harm may result from a very wide range of circumstances and can in addition be objective and specific to a particular child. Accordingly it is considered necessary to read the files in detail to be able to identify the harm suffered and it may be necessary for this to be done by a service professional. Accordingly on a conservative estimate of 20 minutes per matter. This equates to an estimate of 313 hours to fulfil your request.

However, you should be advised that a modified request will be given due consideration provided the work involved does not, again, exceed the fee limit. Any modification to your request will be treated as a new request for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act.

Please contact me again if you require any further assistance on this matter and I will do my best to provide relevant help and advice.

We are obliged to advise you that the disclosure to you of the enclosed information does not give you the right to reproduce or publish such information without the express permission of the County Council or any other owners of the copyright therein.

If you have any queries please do come back to me in the first instance. If you are unhappy with my response, you can ask the Council to review it. To do this please write to the following address:

Paul Edwards

Head of Business Intelligence and Performance

Northamptonshire County Council

PO Box 93

County Hall

Northampton NN1 1AN

If our internal review does not resolve the issue to your complete satisfaction, you have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner for a decision at the following address:

Information Commissioner

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilsmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF.

Or, if you have any complaints in respect of your information request please complete the on-line comments form that can be found at www.northamptonshire.gov.uk, along with a full set of guidance.

Yours sincerely

Gillian Hollowell

Senior Freedom of Information/Data Protection Officer

Legal and Democratic Services

Northamptonshire county Council

Tel 01604 237407

E Mail [email address]

Northamptonshire County Council

Please ask for: Gillian Hollowell

Tel: 01604 237404

Our ref: FR1499

Your ref:

Date: 27 October 2009

NCC

County hall

Northampton

NN11DN

w. www.northamptonshire.gov.uk

t. 01604 237407

f. 01604 237004

e. [email address]